


nomen corde

by Roselightfairy



Series: Velle [3]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwarf Culture & Customs, Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Tattoos, explicit images
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25183585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: “Everything,” Legolas said simply.  “I would know all of you – or, all that you are willing to share.”“Of these, nothing is secret from you.”Each one of Gimli’s tattoos has a story.  Legolas wants to learn all of them.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Series: Velle [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814452
Comments: 39
Kudos: 285





	nomen corde

**Author's Note:**

> In _Velle_ , you see that Gimli is covered in tattoos, but they never get any special mention. But DeHeerKonijn put in so much work creating them that we couldn’t let them go by unmentioned. Also, they were not described in the alt text - so if you were using a screen reader, here is a written-out map for you!
> 
> If you want a physical reference after all of this, there is an image in the endnotes. The image is of a nude body, but I'm leaving the story rating as Mature because I think it's more appropriate for the nature of the fic and am not sure exactly where the border lies between M and E. If you don't want to see nudity, just leave the fic at the end of the story and you won't be missing anything except a picture of a naked dwarf!

“Tell me about them.”

“Hmm?” Gimli had been dozing, lulled nearly into slumber by the satisfied heaviness in his limbs and the aimless trails of Legolas’s fingers over his skin, but he stirred now into wakefulness. “Whom?”

Legolas chuckled. “Not whom,” he said, “not unless your inkings have such significance as to be counted companions in their own right!” His finger followed a loop on Gimli’s bicep, and Gimli realized that Legolas’s tracing had not been as directionless as he had thought. “These. We have spoken of one already, but I would know of the others as well. Surely each has its own story.”

“Ah – yes.” Gimli blinked, his mind clearing. “Most do, though some I chose merely for decoration. What would you know?”

“Everything,” Legolas said simply. “I would know all of you – or, all that you are willing to share.”

“Of these, nothing is secret from you.” Gimli would tell Legolas all dwarvish secrets if he might, but there would be time enough for that – to obtain permissions or discard them as he would. But nothing on his body would be withheld from his beloved’s knowledge, and he would openly defy all laws of dwarfkind to honor that most sacred of truths. “Ask, and I will tell you all you would like to know.”

“Hmm.” Legolas smiled his secret smile, the one that Gimli only ever saw when he had been laid out and prepared and it was only for Legolas to decide where to begin. The thought would have stirred his body, had it not been so soon after their last bout – as it was, his belly warmed with it. Legolas rolled over to Gimli’s left side and traced the lines of the craft tattoo on his shoulder. “Let us begin here, then. What is this one?”

“That is the tattoo to signal my mastery,” Gimli said. “All dwarves receive the mark of their guild once they have finished their apprenticeship and been deemed worthy.”

Legolas’s finger followed the boxy lines of the crossed keys, tracing each slowly and deliberately. “You have never shown me your hidden talents in locksmithing.”

“Have I not?” Gimli waggled his eyebrows, and Legolas let out a startled laugh. “You underestimate the dwarven talent for metaphor, my love. As I have told you, my mastery is in statecraft: the construction of kingdoms. The keys are a symbol, meant to represent both the gates of a newly-built stronghold and the diplomatic art of crossing boundaries, opening doors.”

“Hmm.” The mischief faded from Legolas’s eyes, and he nodded slowly. “I like that. And this one?”

His hand had moved lower, to the knotwork that encircled Gimli’s bicep. Gimli shrugged. “Decoration. The artist who drew that one specialized in such patterns; I so admired her work that I told her to do what she would.”

“And she did it beautifully.” Legolas curled closer and pressed his lips to the ink. Not since it had first been drawn on his skin had Gimli felt anything from the mark, but now he fancied he could feel the whole of the tattoo beneath the touch of Legolas’s lips.

“The same artist did the work on the other arm,” Gimli said, and Legolas rolled over to his other side to inspect it.

“It is different, but similar,” he commented, and his finger tickled over the links. “I would not know the patterns differed had I not looked closely. And what of the flame on the forearm?”

“That is a common symbol,” Gimli said. “Dwarves value fire, after all – it heats our smithies and burns in our souls. But this one is personal as well: my father was always renowned for his fire-starting ability, and he passed it on to me.”

“I remember this from our quest,” Legolas said. He smiled, and Gimli felt his own lips curving up at the memory of more than once wrestling flint from Legolas’s hands. “It is fitting, then.”

“I commissioned this after my first mission outside the mountain,” Gimli said. “I proved I had inherited my father’s skill, and I had this inked in his honor and in my own.”

Legolas pressed his lips to the flame. “It is lovely,” he said. “A fitting tribute. And above?”

He moved his lips from Gimli’s forearm to his shoulder, just above the knotwork on this arm, at what Gimli could only imagine was the tip of one of the crystals drawn there. “That is for my mother,” he said. “She is a superb jeweler, and my father has always said she is the geode heart of our family.”

He laughed, a little embarrassed, but Legolas only gave his arm another kiss. “I have heard nothing from you that contradicts that assessment,” he said. “I am eager to meet her at last.”

“As am I.” Gimli often wished he had gathered the courage to confess his feelings to Legolas before they had parted the first time, and perhaps most often when he thought about how Legolas had yet to meet his family beyond his brief encounter with Glóin in Rivendell. He reached up with his free left hand to cup Legolas’s face – but Legolas caught his arm instead, pulling away from Gimli’s shoulder for a better view. 

“And this,” he said. “I have noticed this before, but it is fainter than the others.” He turned Gimli’s arm up and stroked the soft skin on the inside of his forearm, and Gimli groaned. “It does not look so professionally done, if I may venture a guess as to the nature of dwarven craftsmanship.”

“You guess rightly,” Gimli sighed. “My cousin Ganar.” The memory was more amusing now in retrospect than it had been the morning after. “He fancied himself a fine hand with a needle, and I was young enough that I did not think better of his offer when we were both deep in our cups. It is meant to be a lizard, though I do not blame you if you do not see it.”

Legolas tilted his head one way, then the other. “I see it now, now that you have identified it.” He grinned, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “A lizard?”

“A jest with my cousins, since we were very small,” confessed Gimli. “Many were the times we were forbidden from elders’ bedchambers, and I beg you to ask me no more about it!”

The twinkle in Legolas’s eyes promised that this would not be the end of the conversation, but for now he let his fingers wander from Gimli’s arm and onto his chest. “Very well, then,” he said. “Tell me about the bear.”

“This was – ah.” Gimli blushed a little. “Mostly it was to symbolize my coming of age. It represents strength, ferocity – ah, stamina . . .”

“ _Does_ it now?” Legolas’s eyes flashed with mischievous delight. “The stamina for which I have had such cause to be grateful?”

“Perhaps.” Gimli caught Legolas’s face between his hands and pulled him close for a kiss, and this time he was not intercepted. One became two, became more, and for some time their mouths were too occupied for talk.

When he finally pulled back, Legolas’s cheeks had taken on a rosy flush, deepened by the glow of the lantern. “Well,” he said, laying a hand over the right side of Gimli’s chest, “you chose well.”

“I am pleased you think so,” said Gimli.

“Stamina indeed.” Legolas let his hand wander down Gimli’s chest, then lower – Gimli hissed in a breath as Legolas’s fingers tickled over his inner thigh, but even still his body was not quite ready to stir to full wakefulness. “But perhaps not yet.”

Gimli swatted at him, but Legolas only laughed and left his hand on Gimli’s thigh. “And here?” he said, tracing lines on the sensitive skin that made Gimli shiver. The drawing of that mark had been one of the more agonizing processes, less from the pain than the intimacy of the placement – but still, it had proven its own reward over and over again in moments just such as this one.

“That is a modified version of the insignia of the line of Durin,” Gimli said. “Or so I explained it to the artist who drew it. In truth,” he let his hand wander down to cover Legolas’s – excruciatingly, delightfully close to that most sensitive part of his body – “I think of it more as a prize to be discovered by the most fortunate of seekers.”

Legolas pushed himself up to lean over Gimli. “A prize, is it?” he said. “And I am the lucky recipient?”

Gimli tilted his head up. “It is yours to find anew each time,” he said, and Legolas gave him another flash of that promising smile and kissed him once more, long and deep.

“So, decoration, then,” he said when he drew back, “like the work on your arms. Are there any others like these, without a story behind them?”

“Only this one.” Gimli guided Legolas’s hand over his chest to rest on his left side, beneath his arm. “Like the knotwork on my arms, it was a specialty of the artist that caught my fancy.”

Legolas pushed himself onto hands and knees and leaned all the way over Gimli’s body, head tipping upside down and his hair showering down over Gimli’s chest and arm. “It is simple,” he commented, “yet intricate.” He traced the crossed lines in the center of the boxy geometric pattern, then rose again and moved to curl back up against Gimli’s right side, head resting on his shoulder. “I think that is all on the front – yes?” He waited for Gimli’s nod. “Then tell me about the marks on your back.”

Gimli grunted, bracing himself to turn over, but Legolas shook his head and kept a hand on his chest to hold him down. “No, you need not rise – I remember them well enough.”

Yes, Gimli supposed he would.

“The nine stars on the right shoulder blade,” Legolas said. “Curving down and around.”

“Can you not guess the significance of those?” Gimli said.

“Nine,” said Legolas, “for the Fellowship.” They both paused for a moment in an unspoken honoring of those they had lost, to death or over sea. “And stars – for you? You have told me that is the meaning of your name . . .”

“Ostensibly for me,” he said, then smiled. In fact, he had thought himself quite clever for this idea. “They are not the same shape as those on the Numenorean crest, but I thought to give honor to our Gondorian friends as best I might without openly wearing another country’s symbol on my skin.”

“Oh – subtle and brilliant, as always,” Legolas said, and brushed a kiss over Gimli’s cheekbone as if to reward him. “I am sure they would find it fitting tribute indeed.”

“I hope so,” said Gimli.

“I know so.” Legolas gave him another kiss, just on the corner of the mouth. “Then there is just one thing I have yet to ask about.”

“One more thing?” Gimli frowned. There was only one more tattoo, it was true – but they had already spoken of that one, some time before. The pattern on his left shoulder – of a sea bird winging its way over sails and waves, meant as a tribute to Gimli’s first home in the Blue Mountains near the sea – the one he had had inked by a local artist before his departure to Erebor. That one they had discussed the first time Legolas had seen it, on a cozy evening in their home in Minas Tirith some time before their elven wedding. Did Legolas mean to ask him about it again, to turn their pleasant conversation to thoughts of pain? Or was there something else, and Gimli had somehow forgotten one of his own inkings?

“Yes,” Legolas said, but his eyes did not flicker with the usual sadness that spoke of the sea-longing. “Here.” He pressed his hand to Gimli’s unmarked heart, and Gimli swore his pulse moved closer to his skin, as though longing to draw nearer to Legolas’s touch. “Here there is nothing.”

“Nothing yet,” said Gimli, and now he did not imagine that his heart had begun to beat faster.

He knew Legolas marked it; his eyes, already soft and serious, grew even more solemn. “Yet?” he said, his voice rasping a little.

“That is for you,” said Gimli. He had known he would bring this up sometime, but had not known how to begin – but now, from Legolas’s expression, he wondered if the elf had not been moving the conversation to this moment all along. “I had planned to tell you, but I did not know” –

“Is this a wedding custom?” Legolas said softly. He pushed himself up onto his left forearm once more and his hair spilled tickling over Gimli’s chest and stomach. “You have so many inkings already, it seemed there must be something of the sort.”

“It is.” Gimli brought his hand up to rest over Legolas’s own. “The pattern itself may vary, but it follows a few common conventions: some symbol that represents the spouse woven into a chain or border, surrounding his name or insignia at the heart. I have already something in mind for you; I will draw it for you later, if you would like to see. And I had meant to ask – if you would grant me permission to bear your name or symbol over my heart.”

Legolas’s eyes had gone very bright, and Gimli could not tell if it was from emotion or from the soft glow of their lantern. “Of course,” he murmured. “And do you grant me leave to bear the same?”

Gimli started. In all his imaginings of this conversation, he had not expected this. His eyes swept over Legolas’s smooth, unmarked skin – hardly even a blemish or scar to be seen. “You?” he said. “But you” –

“I understand if it is not permitted,” Legolas said. “Dwarves guard their traditions very closely, after all; I understand if it would be too much to write your language on the skin of an elf. But if it may be granted” –

“I would learn the craft myself,” said Gimli fiercely, “if we could not find someone else willing. But are you sure you want this? I know that inkings are not typically worn among your people” –

“Neither do my people typically marry dwarves,” Legolas interrupted him. “But do not for a moment think I would be anything but proud to bear the name of my husband, to wear you on my skin for all the rest of time.” He turned his hand beneath Gimli’s to clasp their fingers, and then brought their joined hands to his own heart. “We agreed we would be wedded in all ways known to our people. If you are to bear my mark, I would wear yours in turn, just as proudly.”

A lump had risen in Gimli’s throat; he swallowed hard and had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Well,” he said gruffly. “When asked so sweetly, how could I turn down such a request?”

“I hoped you would not,” whispered Legolas, his eyes sparkling.

Gimli could say nothing more. He reached up instead, with his free hand, and pulled Legolas down to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want a better visual of the tattoos, here is a wonderful reference image that DeHeerKonijn created while we were dreaming these up:


End file.
